


Sleep is for the Weak

by wowl



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Angst, Angst and Porn, Best Friends, Comfort/Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, M/M, Platonic Cuddling, Platonic Kissing, Platonic Relationships, Platonic Sex, Ronan Lynch Angst, Ronan Lynch is Bad at Feelings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-28
Updated: 2018-04-30
Packaged: 2019-03-25 03:06:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13825164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wowl/pseuds/wowl
Summary: Richard Campbell Gansey III is bad at sleeping. So is Ronan Lynch.Alternative title: Four times Ronan Lynch slept with Gansey III, and one time he didn’t.I'm really super into the idea of Ronan and Gansey helping each other sleep when they can't apart, pair of anixiety-ridden insomniacs that they are. So here it is. Platonically sleeping in the same bed as each other, maybe-sorta making out with each other, also sorta-more-than making-out with each other. However, I am also firmly in love with Ronan/Adam so that's where this fic is heading. Chapters 4 and 5 are WIP.





	1. All Sharp Edges

The first night that Ronan Lynch and Richard Gansey slept together was the first night Ronan had ever spent at Monmouth Manufacturing.

Six days and four hours after finding his father’s body bloody and beaten, Ronan was a raw nerve. He and his brothers had been told to leave the Barns, and though Niall Lynch’s BMW was already parked in the lot of Monmouth, Ronan had insisted on walking back home – to what had been, until now, his home – to gather the last of his things, flying under Declan’s radar and creating an extremely high risk of a fist-fight breaking out if he was discovered. Gansey suspected that this was what Ronan was aiming for when he had set off on foot earlier that day, but he let him go anyway. Gansey had, however, insisted on picking him up by 9. He stared at the dusty clock fixed high on the wall of what passed for his apartment, an 80s monstrosity of glowing digits that was too high to easily reach and seemed to have been cemented to the wall, so there it stayed. It was exactly 7pm. He tapped a biro off his jaw in time with the movement of the second hand, the deep furrow in his brow betraying his would-be casual posture: feet propped up on the desk, leaning back, a pile of notes on ley lines and welsh kings forgotten, for now, beside him. Two more hours. Two hours until he had Ronan here, where he could keep an eye on him. He’d never seen his friend like this before, like he had been in the last six days. Not seen anyone like this before, for that matter. It wasn’t like he was even the same person. There was a crack through the middle where a boy had used to be.

One hour fifty nine minutes.

Gansey picked up his phone from the desk without looking, pressed ‘dial’ to re-call the most recent number. It rang for thirty seconds, made a click. “Ronan’s phone, leave a message if you want.” The recording seemed to come from somewhere very far away. Another country, another world, from another person entirely than the Ronan that existed now. Gansey hung up without speaking, dialled again. Still no answer. He put the phone down.

One hour fifty eight minutes.

He picked up the keys to the Camaro.

\---

As Gansey pulled into the final stretch of long, winding private road that led to what had been the Lynch family home, he saw the complex of buildings laid out ahead of him in the distance, and a small, hunched figure walking down the road towards him. As the car got closer the figure came together; a bunch of limbs and broken parts attempting to present the form of Ronan Lynch. Gansey slowed the car, pulling up beside him and leaning over to open the passenger side door. Ronan had a canvas backpack over one shoulder, one hand in his jeans pocket. He stopped walking, not looking at Gansey or the open door, instead continuing to stare at the road ahead of him. There was a wildness about his eyes that Gansey had become familiar with over the past few days; the caged intensity that had always been a part of his friend was now on the loose. 

“Getting in?” he asked, as cheerfully as he could muster. Ronan turned his head slightly to sneer into the copse of trees to the left of the road. Just as Gansey drew a breath to ask again, Ronan shrugged the backpack off his shoulder and slung it into the Camaro’s back seat. He threw himself into the passenger seat and slammed the door closed behind him. Gansey looked at him, his friend’s profile exuding fury, every inch of him a bladed edge. He felt too sharp to even look at, but Gansey looked anyway. He nodded his head in the direction of the backpack.

“Is that everything you’ve got with you? Should we grab the rest of your stuff now, or would you like to come back tomorrow?” He was trying to talk as normally as possible, to be Shiny Positive Normal Gansey. He wasn’t sure if that was the right thing to do or a very very wrong thing, but as far as Ronan’s body language was concerned everything was a very very wrong thing. It wasn’t much to go on.

“Just go,” Ronan growled.

Gansey slammed the Camaro into reverse and craned his neck to look out of the rear window, driving backwards away from the Barns. Ronan stared at what was his home as it retreated from view. Gansey turned a corner and shifted gears, accelerating forwards now around a small hill and back towards Henrietta. Once the car had turned, Ronan did not look back.

The silence of the journey was oppressive. It was the kind of silence that was more metaphorical than literal; there was, of course, the roaring of the Pig's engine and the other cars once they reached the highway. But the essence of the car's interior had become glass. Gansey didn't break it. He didn't want to cut himself on it. More than that, he didn't want Ronan to cut himself on it.

Gansey had barely pulled to a stop outside Monmouth Manufacturing before Ronan was opening the door and getting out. He slammed it closed with an aggression that made Gansey inwardly wince, yanking open the back passenger door to retrieve his backpack then slamming that one too. Gansey watched Ronan as he stalked off to the door of the building, where he stopped dead, presumably waiting for him. He folded himself out of the car carefully, approaching the other boy as if he were some kind of semi-tamed wild animal; he knew the old Ronan inside out, but this new Ronan was… unpredictable. Gansey stepped past him and opened the door, headed up the stairs to the first floor. He could feel Ronan’s energy behind him, sharp and hot, and it made the skin on the back of his neck prickle.

Once they were inside the apartment, Gansey turned to put his keys down on the small wooden trunk that served as a side table beside the door, but Ronan kept on walking. He surged past Gansey to the office they had converted into a bedroom for him a few days ago. The door swung aggressively shut behind him. Gansey let the keys drop out of his hand into a dish, the metallic clinking ringing out in the empty space. Then there was only silence, and the heat that seemed to be coming off Ronan’s bedroom door, and the space, the vast empty space that yawned between them.

\---

10:47PM, the clock screamed in its dayglow numbers. Since the initial shock of New Ronan had worn off – every time that Gansey had encountered him so far, it was like being plunged head first into an ice bath: it took some time to adjust and become numb to the pain – he had been striding from Ronan’s door to the desk to the window to his bed to the chair to Ronan’s door and on and on, pacing around the room like a caged cat, hackles up. 

10:48PM. He stood outside Ronan’s door, breath halted. He went to knock, thought better of it. Turned to walk away, stopped. Turned back. Knocked, three times, knuckles on paint-peeling wood.

Nothing. But then that was what he had expected. Richard Campbell Gansey III didn’t like to feel out of control, to say the least. The idea that there was nothing he could do in this situation – nothing he could say or do or buy to make this situation better, to start to piece back together the fractured edges that seemed to be all that were left of his friend – was intolerable. He looked down at himself, took in the hi-tops and the cargo shorts and the polo, and made a decision. He walked over to the trunk at the foot of the bed that held most of his non-Aglionby clothes, and pulled out a fresh polo, salmon pink. He pulled the old one off and balled it up, throwing it over to the laundry basket and putting the new one on. He was back over at Ronan’s door in a few bounds, and knocked again.

“Ronan?”

This time, he heard movement from inside. After a few heavy footsteps, the door opened a few inches, Ronan looking through the gap, head resting on the doorframe, his eyes glassy, his edges now coated in whiskey. He didn’t say anything, didn’t even raise an eyebrow. He just looked at Gansey, his eyes boring through him, the expression and depth of hurt in them painful for Gansey to look at. Gansey shook it off.

“I’m thinking we should get something to eat. I can order in. Pizza?”

Ronan just looked at him.

“Or not, if you’re not hungry. I just thought it might be an idea, or that you might like some company?”

More staring. Gansey stared back, running out of things to say. The not-liking-not-being-in-control was combining with the not-knowing-what-to-do-to-fix-things, with knowing there was nothing he could do to fix things, and he wasn’t sure if that was what felt like a knife twisting somewhere in the region of his appendix or whether it was just the way Ronan was looking at him.

He stood there, looking back, his veneer of confidence fading, arms hanging useless at his sides. 

Ronan shut the door.

\---

Afterwards, he wasn’t sure which woke him first: the yelling, or the sound of shattering glass. 

He sat bolt upright in his bed, where he had been tossing fitfully, righting the glasses that were askew on his face. A colossal crashing thunk and clatter came from behind Ronan’s door, jerking Gansey fully into the present. He scrambled out of bed, crossed the room in four huge strides, and shoved open the door just in time for an empty bottle smash on the wall right next to his head.

Ronan was crouched in the manner of a wounded animal bracing itself to fight off a predator even though it knows it’s as good as dead. Desperation beaded across every inch of his skin, his bare arms taught, knuckles white as he clutched the edge of the desk. 

Gansey raised his hand, palm up, a peace offering. “Ronan-”

With a guttural roar, Ronan flipped the desk. In the tiny room, there was no space for the enormity of the gesture; the exceedingly well-made desk just clattered against the wall and straight back down, one of its legs begrudgingly conceding to be at a slightly different angle. The sheer impotency of Ronan’s rage, trapped with nowhere to escape, had coated every surface of the room in fury. The air seemed to drip with it. Ronan yelled, a primal sound that was somewhere terrible between a roar and a scream. His fists clenched, he punched the wall next to his head. The plaster gave. The walls of Monmouth Manufacturing were made of far less sturdy stuff than the furniture that Gansey had filled it with. Having found something satisfying to break, Ronan did it again. And again. Over and over he pummelled the wall, Gansey frozen in the doorway. Gansey briefly wished that he was physically bigger than Ronan, wondering if there was any way that he could physically stop his friend from hurting himself. His mind ran through a list of people he could call to help: the police (no), an ambulance (no), Declan (hell no). Anxiety and an overwhelming sense of uselessness constricted his throat, his arm braced in the doorway next to where the bottle had hit, shards of broken glass littered around his bare feet. Blood appeared on the destroyed plaster, Ronan’s knuckles split and raw. Ronan’s blood, smearing across the wall as he hit it again, again, again.

Gansey’s feet moved before his mind had realised it was acting. They jumped over the broken bottle and were next to Ronan in two steps. His hand reached out and touched Ronan’s right shoulder. Ronan spun instantly, his bloodied fist colliding with Gansey’s jaw. Gansey fell backward onto the bed, his arms instinctively flung up to protect himself, bewildered and hurting and useless, useless, useless. 

But Ronan was finally still, fists clenched at his side, shoulders heaving as he breathed, ragged and broken. He looked down at his friend laid before him, and the fury on this face melted into pure despair. He dropped down to his knees, dangerously close to more broken glass, and stared stoically at the floor. Gansey lowered his arms, sat forward. The room was so small that if he perched gently on the edge of the bed he was face to face with Ronan, whose expression somehow exuded sharp edges. Ronan determinedly avoided looking him in the eyes. 

Gansey didn’t say anything for a long while. He looked at Ronan, all of him: the fury in his brow, the glass edge of his cheekbones, the twist of tension where his neck met his collarbone. The frozen fire of his shoulders, still poised ready for violence at any moment. The fists, bruised and bloody. The boy, bruised and bloody. 

Eventually, he leant back, and in response Ronan shifted his shoulders, shrugging off the shroud of violence, for now. His eyes flickered up, blue through dark lashes, dark waves of hair hiding half of his face. He took a sharp breath in. "It’s just-"

Gansey looked at him. Ronan looked away, let out a long, shaky breath.

“Sorry, man.”

He stood up then, something weary in his movements. The Ronan that Gansey had known before was always lithe, springy, kinetic. This Ronan was still electric with the possibility of movement, but it felt more like electric with the possibility of imminent explosion. Ronan sank down onto the bed next to Gansey, then lay down on his side, screwing the heels of his hands into his eyes, curling his legs to his chest. Gansey felt something tug in his chest. Instinctively, he shifted himself backward and lay down between Ronan and the wall. As soon as he was there it felt like a mistake: the wall was an external one and was freezing, and he didn’t actually want to touch Ronan unbidden lest he trigger something that Ronan very much did not want triggering. He could feel the heat coming off the body curled beside him as he lay rigid, back straight to avoid pressing against the cold wall, the rest of him straight to avoid being consumed by the fire that was Ronan. As they lay there, Gansey could feel his heart rate slowing back down, the adrenaline leaving his veins. Slowly, slowly, the anxiety that had been gripping him let him go, his breathing steadying. He lifted his hand, wanting to touch Ronan’s bare arm in front of him, but hesitated, holding it there.

Suddenly, as if sensing this, Ronan rolled over to face him. His eyes, now no longer covered by hands, were red with fury and crying, their bright blue irises all the more striking for it: a beautiful centre at the heart of the pain. His arms were folded across his chest now, a barrier between them, a sense of Ronan holding himself together. Without giving himself time to think about it, Gansey reached out and brushed away a lock of dark hair that had been stuck to Ronan’s cheek. Ronan let out a strangulated noise that was something not-quite-human, and shoved his face into Gansey’s chest. 

Gansey again felt the feeling of not-knowing-what-to-do-to-fix-this, of knowing there was nothing he could do to fix it. He leant his cheek onto the top of Ronan’s head, wrapped his free arm around his shoulders, pulled him close. Ronan’s body shuddered with silent sobs, and Gansey breathed him in. The smell of whiskey and beer didn’t mask the grass-and-freedom smell that Gansey had always associated with him. It was still there, under the alcohol and the fresh sweat that added a new, animalistic layer to the smell that was and has always been Ronan Lynch. They lay like that for a few minutes, Gansey wrapped around Ronan as if it would somehow protect his friend from the world, as if he could take on all of Ronan’s sharp edges and prevent Ronan from cutting himself on them. Prevent him from cutting the world on them. Eventually, Ronan’s breathing slowed down too, and Gansey realised the other boy’s hand was clenched tight around a fistful of his polo shirt, clinging to the anchor that was holding him here, in his bed, in the world, in this nightmare that threatened to topple him. 

His could not tell, after, how long it had been until they fell asleep like that, clutching each other in the dark of the wreckage. When Gansey’s eyes blinked open in the morning, it was to a bright dawn light streaming through the high windows, a room of broken parts and an empty bed. He sat up, brow furrowing into immediate concern, and staggered blearily out through the door, being careful not to step on any of the glass.

“Ronan?” he called, trying not to sound too panicked or urgent. He adjusted his glasses, squinting into the huge, empty room. “Ronan?”

Ronan bounded from the bathroom-kitchen-laundry, bare footed and tousle-haired and dressed head-to-toe in black. His face still bore the hurt of last night, but he was masking it under a jutted-out chin and a Don’t Fucking Ask expression. In his hand, he held up a pair of clippers.

“Morning, Dick.” The smile that quirked at the corners of his mouth was nothing like the free-and-easy one that used to be his signature. It was now, like the rest of him, hardened. Everything about him exuded a sense of barbed-wire, of stay-away. Gansey swallowed, wondering once more if he’d ever see the friend he has known again, or whether this was it now, forever.

“Morning, Lynch.”

Ronan’s smile spread wider, oddly aggressive, manic, mean. He waved the clippers at Gansey.

He said, “I want you to shave my head.”


	2. Real/Not-Real/Shouldn't-Be-Real-But-Is

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The wasp was dead and safely inside the waste paper basket, but still Gansey couldn't sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author recommendation: re-read Raven Boys Chapter 16 before this chapter, as it follows directly on from there.

Gansey stood staring at the waste basket for a while, until the clouds outside had shifted enough that he could no longer make out the glint of the wasp’s wings. He hadn’t heard Noah skulk back to his room, but when Gansey turned around he was no longer there, both his and Ronan’s doors closed and (for now, until the bird woke up again) quiet.

He placed his shoe back with the other one next to his desk, his mind whirring with busy nothingness, too tired now to form cohesive thoughts, his eyes itchy. He padded in his socks to the bathroom-kitchen-laundry room, not bothering to close the door behind him. He leant heavily on the edge of the basin, staring down at the white ceramic flecked all over with tiny dark hairs from where Ronan had re-shaved his head earlier that day. He turned on the tap, cupping his hand under the water and watching it pool there for a few moments before splashing it around the sink. He did this over and over, until he was watching the last of the hairs spiral down the drain. 

He dried his hands on the improbably luxurious towel that hung next to the basin, its thick pile at odds with the rest of the room. Without looking at his reflection, he took out his contacts and placed them carefully in their little white pots, squirting some saline over them before clicking it shut and placing it on the shelf next to a mug of toothbrushes (Noah’s, pristine and pale blue. Gansey’s, green and high-tech with multi-length neon bristles. Ronan’s, red, bristles all bent back on themselves from too-hard brushing. Gansey made a mental note to buy him a new one). 

He brushed his teeth thoroughly, staring at his reflection in the mirror, now blurred by poor vision, then rinsed and placed his toothbrush back in the mug. He ran his hands back through his hair, cupping them at the back of his neck, twisting side to side in an attempt to relieve some of the tension. His shoulder made a crunching noise. He turned away.

Gansey staggered over to his bed, tiredness now pressing in on his bones. He pulled off his chinos and socks, tugged his polo over his head, let the clothes and the day lie where they fell at his feet. He lay down, tugging the blankets up over him against the chill. He closed his eyes, but sleep didn’t come; still his mind whirred aimlessly, his body craving rest but his heart unable to slow. He lay there for what felt like a very long time, feeling the slightness of a breeze across his cheek from a draughty window, listening to the sound of occasional cars passing in the distance. 

Something clicked in the dark, followed by a softness of footsteps. It came from the direction of Ronan’s room, so Gansey didn’t move, didn’t open his eyes. The feet, though, did not head to the bathroom as he would have expected. Instead, they approached his bed. He felt the mattress give as someone sat down on the far side of it, then again as they shifted their body and lay down next to him. Gansey smelt the familiar scent of grass and earth and Ronan, and breathed it in. It soothed him more than he had thought possible, spreading from his lungs through him like a drug. He didn’t open his eyes.

He felt a flutter as hesitant fingers brushed his arm through the thin blanket, then a firmer touch, as if the fingers’ owner had resolved their intent. He felt Ronan shift his body even closer, felt the heat of it. 

“Gansey, are you awake?”

Gansey didn’t reply; the relief of Ronan’s presence had drained the adrenaline out of him and robbed him of the energy to move. He thought, Yes, I am awake.

Ronan murmured, “Don’t fucking scare me like that, man. Fuck. I can’t sleep.”

Gansey’s eyes fluttered open. Ronan’s face was inches from his, a frown of defence mechanism covering the worry underneath. He felt Ronan’s eyes searching his face as much as he saw it, flickering over his features, looking for something there that even Gansey himself couldn’t find.

Ronan leaned forward and kissed Gansey’s forehead. 

Something inside Gansey yielded then, some wall he’d had up within himself that prevented him from thinking too much about the true levels of intimacy in their friendship. Ronan rolled away onto his back, but Gansey reached out and gently turned Ronan’s face back to him. They looked at each other, the last walls between them crumbling. In the dark, it was easy to believe that this wasn’t real. The lines between what was real and not-real and shouldn’t-be-real-but-is were growing weaker all the time these days. 

After, Gansey couldn’t have told you who moved first. It wasn’t a conscious thing. It was as if his brain rewrote it so that there had never been any space between them at all. What he could tell you, however, was exactly what Ronan’s lips felt like against his own, exactly the smell of the crook of Ronan’s neck, exactly the way their legs felt entwined with each other. It didn’t feel anything like Gansey had expected this to feel, like some clumsy collision of his body with someone else’s, like awkward tangles of limbs and saliva and teeth. Gansey wasn’t one for clichés, but after, he thought it had been like they were inhabiting the same space. Like they were each other’s home. 

After, he remembered Ronan saying nothing at all. All that was left was him sunk into the crook of Ronan’s arm, pressed so hard against each other that they couldn’t tell whose limbs were whose anymore, murmuring into Ronan’s neck:

I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.

After, they slept, a tangle of boys in a tangle of sheets, and neither of them dreamt. Or, Gansey had dreamt this. Or, Ronan had dreamt this.

After, when Gansey woke up alone, he couldn’t have told you if it had been real or not. Whether Ronan had really crept into his bed, whether they had really brushed kisses all over each other’s faces, necks, arms, chests. Whether he had really fallen asleep pressed deep into Ronan’s chest, just as Ronan had fallen asleep pressed into his all those months ago. Whether it had only been a dream brought on by his subconscious desperately seeking comfort, closeness, home.

After, he only hoped it had been real.


	3. Dark Places

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ronan is familiar with his mind wandering to dark places. What he's not used to, however, is the dark place being Gansey's Bed.
> 
> [Explicit content warning in this chapter. Filth and potty mouth galore. Also content-warning for over-use of compound adjectives.]

Ronan lay on his back, arms crossed, staring at the ceiling. By the eerie green glow of the desk lamp, he watched as a dream-spider made of clockwork parts crawled across it, searching for a new corner in which to weave its strange golden webs that resembled hanging mandalas. He frowned. He wasn’t fond of spiders, and this one was no better than any other arachnid. Worse, even. Whenever you tried to catch it, it disassembled itself with a burst of cogs, scattering its minute parts across as wide an area as possible, then reassembled itself as soon as you thought you’d gotten rid of them all.

A crack of dim light ran along the bottom of the door. Every so often, he heard the pad of feet and a creaking of floorboards from the room on the other side of it. Every so often, the sound of sellotape being torn from its spool. Every so often, the urge to leave his bed and join the boy on the other side became almost overwhelming.

He drummed the fingers of his left hand on his right forearm. His foot twitched in time with some unhearable music. His brain tried to find a song to match the beat. _Squash one, squash two-_

He exhaled. He looked for the spider again, for something to focus on to keep his unsleeping mind from wandering. From remembering.

The firm skin of Gansey’s arm under his hand. The softness of his fingertips turning Ronan’s face toward him. The sensation of his heart plummeting into freefall as Gansey’s lips had brushed against his. The mint on his breath-

Ronan abruptly sat up. This wasn’t working. For a month he had been determinedly not-thinking about it. He was not-thinking about the fact that he kept waking in the night breathless and hard as a rock. He was not-thinking about the heat of Gansey’s legs wrapped around his own, about firm thighs and long-fingered hands, about-

Nope. Nope nope nope. 

It wasn’t working. Not tonight, not any night, not even in the day when by rights he should have had plenty of other things to distract his mind from wandering to dark places. Well, not that dark places were usually a problem. They were only a problem when those dark places were Gansey’s Bed. His mind was constantly providing him with flashes of bodies in the dark: too-pink lips, a firmness of thigh, fingers twisting into hair, a guttural moan. When he closed his eyes at night the images came unbidden, so bad that he even longed to dream to make them go away. During the day, they came at seemingly random times and seemed to be triggered by others more than triggered by Gansey. A single smirk or trying-to-not-look-glance from Parish started these thoughts reeling for hours at a time, Gansey’s delicate-ness replaced with imaginings of Parish’s grease-smeared hands roaming all over Ronan’s skin, of old t-shirts Parish had outgrown peeling up and off to reveal a muscled abdomen, of licking-

There were lots of things, at the moment, that Ronan was trying very very hard to not-think about.

He stared, now, into the green of his desk lamp. The searing pain developing in his retinas did nothing to dispel the images that danced unbidden across his mind’s eye. He blinked, hard. That did nothing either. 

His head snapped to look at his bedroom door at the sound of the bathroom-kitchen-laundry door opening. He stood up, found his feet padding across the room, his hand turning the door handle, his eyes searching the room beyond. The angle poise lamp that usually sat on Gansey’s desk had been pulled into the middle of the floor, its wire trailing to an extension cord that snaked its way across the large room to a power outlet. Ronan’s feet moved him towards it, to where a jumble of cardboard and tape sat next to a pair of scissors, evidence of another night of Gansey building his model Henrietta when sleep eluded him. Ronan sat cross-legged on the floor next to his friend’s work, fingers idly picking at a rogue flap of card that was sticking up from the model road that wound from Cardboard Aglionby down to Cardboard Monmouth Manufacturing. Not-thinking.

The door behind him opened again, the bathroom-kitchen-laundry light clicking off, and Ronan felt rather than heard Gansey crossing the room over to where he sat. A disembodied pair of legs in grey pyjama bottoms appeared opposite him, bending down to become Gansey, shirtless, cross-legged on the floor. Gansey immediately hunched back over his work, unsurprised by Ronan’s materialisation there. Ronan joining Gansey at night was not, in itself, unusual, since both of them were usually awake anyway. 

“Couldn’t sleep?”

“Nah,” said Ronan.

He watched Gansey as he worked, his lightly muscled arms flexing as he bent cardboard into place, the curve of his deltoids, the slight ripple of muscle across his chest whenever he pulled out a strip of tape. Soft lips baring in a sneer as he used his teeth to bite a length off. The inside of Ronan’s chest was aching.

They sat in comfortable silence for a long while, until the cardboard warehouse that Gansey had been assembling was stood in the correct spot and upright, but leaning slightly to the left. Gansey frowned at it.

“Here, hold it up, would you?”

Ronan placed his hands where Gansey had indicated, and Gansey taped another layer of card in place as a support, his hands brushing against Ronan’s as he applied it. His ribs showed through his skin as he hunched over, and Ronan could smell the tea-tree smell of Gansey’s shampoo. Ronan started not-breathing. It seemed to help with the not-thinking.

When it was fixed, Gansey stood up and said, “Tea?”

Ronan thought of the disgusting concoction of leaves and hot water his friend had grown partial to during his time in England and wrinkled his nose. “No, thanks. I don’t know how you drink that stuff.”

Gansey let out a short and breathy laugh, then left for the kitchen. Ronan listened as the kettle boiled and Gansey rattled around in the cutlery drawer. His mind played him a Greatest Hits reel of Gansey’s bared teeth as he bit the tape, of the way he licked his lips as he concentrated, of the muscles in his forearms and chest-

Gansey returned, bringing with him the stench of hot, wet leaves. He placed the steaming mug on the floor, then stood next to Ronan, assessing the structure that lay in front of them. 

“It’s straight now, right?”

Ronan looked up at him, his eyes scanning from the slightly-too-long hem of the grey pants up to Gansey’s hips. The pyjamas were riding low, the band of his boxer briefs visible over the top of them, an expanse of taut stomach and a line of fine, blonde hair leading up to his chest, his shoulders, his neck-

_Lick it._

“Yes,” he said, clearing his throat. “I mean, yeah, definitely straight.”

“Hmm,” said Gansey, as if he wasn’t quite sure about that. 

He leaned over the model building, twisting around to see it from all angles, his legs lightly bent, torso horizontal and hands running over the cardboard walls. He made an unsatisfied noise, dropped into a crouch and leaned around directly in front of the other boy, peering at the work that wouldn’t behave. Ronan observed the curve of Gansey’s shoulder directly in front of him, not-thinking about the way it glided down to become a jut of shoulder blade, not-thinking about the dip where shoulder became bicep. Just generally not-thinking about Gansey’s shoulder at all. Not-thinking about kissing Gansey’s shoulder. Not. Not-thinking, not-thinking, not-

Ronan leaned forwards and brushed his lips against Gansey’s skin.

Gansey twitched reflexively away from the unexpected contact, twisting sharply but gracefully in his crouch so that, now, his shoulders and face were turned towards Ronan, his expression surprised. They were frozen like that for a beat, Ronan’s heart hammering in his chest, a tingle in his lips from their contact with Gansey’s skin, his eyes searching his friend’s face for anything other than mild startle-ment. A tiny line of resolve appeared between Gansey’s eyebrows.

When Gansey’s lips met his, Ronan let out a breath through his nose that felt like he had been holding it in forever. His hands immediately moved up to Gansey’s ribs, thumbs running over the bumps he hadn’t been able to not-think about earlier. Gansey placed a hand firmly on Ronan’s shoulder, pushing him onto his back. Ronan felt one of the cardboard buildings crumple under him as he was gently forced down, but Gansey didn’t seem to notice or care. He leant over Ronan, one of his legs between the other boy’s, and Ronan felt Gansey’s thigh press into him. One hand was still on Ronan’s shoulder, the other bracing his weight on the floor. Ronan felt the shoulder-hand moving up to his neck, coming to rest with its fingers behind his ear, thumb on his cheekbone.

Ronan closed his eyes, ran his hands from Gansey’s ribs up onto his back, fingertips pressing into a softness of skin. Gansey lowered himself until his chest was pressed against Ronan’s chest, and Ronan silently cursed the thin cotton of his black sleeveless t-shirt that was between them. As if reading the other boy’s mind, Gansey pulled his lips away from Ronan’s, and Ronan opened his eyes. He looked down to see Gansey tugging his t-shirt up, revealing Ronan’s abdomen, pulling it up and up until the majority of Ronan’s torso was available to him. Gansey brushed kisses all over Ronan’s chest, and Ronan tipped his head back and closed his eyes, not-thinking about what was happening and, instead, just letting it happen. As Gansey slowly kissed his way down Ronan’s stomach, an indescribable fluttering of lips and tongue that caused Ronan to let out a long, low moan, Ronan submitted completely. The sensations all blurred into one as Gansey’s hands caressed his chest and his lips seemed to be everywhere all at once, and then-

Oh. Oh fuck. Gansey had reached the bulge of Ronan’s cock that was now straining against his navy boxers. The kissing continued, the layer of fabric between Gansey’s lips and Ronan’s cock an exquisite form of torture. Ronan bit his lip, sliding his hands from where they had come to rest on Gansey’s shoulders into his hair, fingers tangling in it. In return, Gansey’s hands slid up Ronan’s thighs, caressing and squeezing tender flesh and coming tantalisingly close to-

Ronan growled. He used Gansey’s hair to gently lever his friend away from his crotch so that he could sit up, one hand moving deftly to Gansey’s hip and pulling him close. Feeling his t-shirt slip back down as he moved, Ronan broke off for a second to tug it off, wanting nothing to exist between his skin and Gansey’s, nothing to stop them from crawling inside of each other. Then his hands were on Gansey’s hips and their lips were together and his skin was pressed against the heat of Gansey as their hands roamed hungrily over one another’s skin and-

Ronan broke away from Gansey’s kiss as he felt the heat of the other boy’s erection against his own. He screwed his eyes shut and let out a low hiss, the wanting and the needing becoming an ache indistinguishable from the ache of hardness between his legs. Gansey’s hands slid down Ronan’s back to his ass, pulling Ronan’s hips in to press against his own, heat and hardness and cocks pressed together, yearning to be free of the three layers of fabric that were between them. Then Gansey was moving, standing up and pulling Ronan with him, first by his hips and then guiding him across the room with his hands on Ronan’s cheeks, kissing him deeply as they moved toward the bed that awaited them in the centre, Ronan’s eyes still screwed shut.

They reached the bed, and Ronan allowed himself to open his eyes as he felt Gansey fall away beneath him, letting go of Ronan and laying himself back on the bed. 

Ronan drank in the image before him; Gansey’s legs spread apart, awaiting Ronan between them, the thick bulge of his hard dick throbbing where they met. That trail of soft, blonde hair that Ronan had wanted so badly to lick earlier. Gansey’s arms lay by his sides, palms up, waiting for Ronan’s arms to meet them. The lump in his throat bobbed as he swallowed, that incredible jawline begging to have Ronan’s tongue run along it, hair tousled and chaotic from Ronan’s fingers entwining themselves in it.

He was a gift, prostrate on the bed. Too beautiful a thing to truly exist, too perfect a creature for Ronan to be allowed to touch him, too much of a human embodiment of Ronan’s aching and wanting. Too much everything Ronan had ever wanted or needed. A gift. A perfection. A dream-thing.

He shook his head, causing Gansey to rise up onto his elbows, a flash of concern moving across the wanting of his face.

No. Not a dream-thing. A real-thing. 

Ronan bent over Gansey and kissed him, hard. This time it was he who pressed a hand into the other boy’s shoulder, he who leant his body over the figure beneath him, he who was the one making the moves. He felt Gansey yield beneath him, and ran his hand down from Gansey’s shoulder, tracing abdominal muscles and thumbing that softness of hair that led down to Gansey’s crotch. Ronan pulled away from the kiss, hooking his fingers under Gansey’s boxers and pulling both them and the grey pyjamas down at the same time. He tugged the clothes down over Gansey’s knees and Gansey kicked them off, then laid back on the bed. Before Ronan was a vision; a tanned teenage dream laid back with his hard cock throbbing a small pool of pre-cum onto his stomach, cheeks flushed and biting his lip. Ronan considered for a moment what _he_ must look like right now, the taught twists of muscles in his arms and shoulders that he knew from the bathroom mirror always looked as if he’d just been in a fight, sprung with tension. His hands unclenched but tense at his sides, not knowing what to do with themselves these days unless they were fists. Or, apparently, touching Gansey. He imagined Gansey’s eyes all over him in that moment, from the dark two-day stubble across his jaw that he knew made him look much older than seventeen, to the tented pants that still restrained his raging hard-on. He made sure to look Gansey in the eye as he pulled his own pants down and off, to make sure this wasn’t a mistake, waiting for the other boy to break his gaze and break it off at any moment. But Gansey didn’t look away. Laid on the bed, he drank Ronan in for a moment, and Ronan felt the breeze of a draft around his calves.

Gansey murmured, “Come here.”

Ronan laid slightly to the side of Gansey and slightly on top of him, Gansey twisting to meet him, immediately hooking his thigh over Ronan’s and pressing in close. Gansey buried his face in Ronan’s neck, lips caressing hot skin, kissing their way down to Ronan’s collarbone. Ronan felt himself leave his body; they were no longer separate people but two halves of the same home. He pressed his palm into Gansey’s lower back to pull him closer, just as Gansey’s hand slipped from Ronan’s thigh to his-

“Oh. Oh fuck.”

Gansey wrapped his hand around Ronan’s cock, stroking it as he kissed his way down Ronan’s abdomen. Ronan felt as though his body had disappeared, or that he was entirely made of nerve-endings, or-

Gansey took Ronan into his mouth, and Ronan was lost. Electric thrills ran through his body, everything a mess of touching and sensation and-

“Fuck, Gansey, fuck.”

Gansey broke away, coming up for air and to press his lips once again against Ronan’s. Ronan sank into it, the usual minty-ness of Gansey’s breath tainted now with the salt of Ronan, the sweet and the not-so-sweet together on his tongue. Ronan pressed Gansey back into the bed, any self-consciousness evaporating in the heat and heady rush of hands and tongues and Gansey being everything, everything, everything.

Now he kissed his way down the other’s stomach, but where Gansey had been gentle and tender and fucking majestic, Ronan was unleashed. He bared his teeth on Gansey’s flesh, gentle bites and teeth tugging skin, and when he heard Gansey moaning he thought he might just cum from the sound of that alone. Then-

“Fuck, Ronan, keep going.”

The fact that he had managed to make Richard Campbell Gansey III swear sent new shivers of pleasure through him. He kissed the tender skin between Gansey’s belly button and the twitching head of his dick, every moan of Gansey’s like a direct signal to Ronan’s cock. He kissed and nipped at Gansey’s stomach, his hips, the tops and insides of his thighs. He ran his tongue along the crease where leg met genitals, eliciting the most delicious whimper.

“Please, Ronan. Please.”

Ronan swallowed, now so hard that the ache of his cock was becoming painful. He did what he was told. He ran the tip of his tongue all the way from the base of Gansey’s cock along the shaft. As he reached the head and parted his lips, it throbbed and brushed against his mouth, and he took it inside.

Ronan moved on instinct, sucking and licking and stroking Gansey’s cock. When something caused a particularly delectable moan, he moved on to something else before coming back and causing the moan again. Time stood still; there was only Gansey, and the moaning, and then-

“Ronan, fuck, Ronan-”

Gansey’s hips bucked uncontrollably, thrusting his cock deeper into Ronan’s mouth. Ronan took it, rubbing the base of Gansey’s dick with one hand, the other on Gansey’s thigh, sucking and licking until the moaning became something else, some animal and out-of-control sound that was simultaneously the most utterly Gansey that Gansey had ever been and so, so far from the version of himself that he presented to the world. So far away from the version he tried to be, and so completely and perfectly the Gansey that Ronan adored.

When Gansey was spent, Ronan crawled back up him, involuntarily groaning as his swollen cock pressed against Gansey’s thigh, trailing kisses along that perfect jawline. Gansey looked entirely undone, cheeks flushed, glowing, eyes closed. They lay there like that for a few minutes, Ronan running his hands across Gansey’s chest and fluttering kisses all over him, gentle now. Gansey came to, eyes slowly opening, finding Ronan’s face. There was something in his look that Ronan couldn’t quite place; a resolve and certainty that were rarely found in their day-to-day lives of searching and not-knowing. Gansey’s eyes searched for Ronan and they found him; Gansey knew Ronan, and Ronan knew him. Ronan leaned away, overcome with feeling and with no blood left in his brain. 

Gansey took advantage of his friend’s submission. He pushed Ronan onto his back and pressed a kiss onto his forehead, Ronan breathing in the intoxicating smell of the fresh sweat on Gansey’s neck. Then Gansey shifted down, bypassing most of Ronan’s body to start licking and sucking and gently biting his way up Ronan’s inner thighs. Ronan heard himself let out a guttural noise, his hands clutching at the bedsheets, balling fabric into fists. When Gansey’s lips finally met his cock, Ronan heard himself moan in a way that barely even sounded like himself. There was no teasing, now: just urgency and the heat of Gansey’s mouth on Ronan’s cock, taking him deep inside, his tongue pressing and licking the underside of Ronan’s shaft. 

Ronan saw stars. Electrical surges radiated out from his cock, his entire body trembling with it, the pleasure beyond anything he had ever experienced, beyond anything he had ever imagined, this real-thing beyond the power of his wildest dream-things. He could hear his own ragged breathing, feel the heat of Gansey’s palms pressed into his hips, and everything was- everything was- everythi-

He came undone all at once, the electric replaced with a heat that consumed his entire body. Everything shuddered, everything trembled, everything was-

Everything was. That was it. Everything just _was_. His body was here, shivers of pleasure beyond pleasure coursing through every inch of it, this indescribable everything with Gansey between his thighs. 

Eventually, the intensity faded to a gentle tremble. When Ronan opened his eyes, he found Gansey had moved up next to him on the bed without him noticing, once hand placed gently on Ronan’s chest where his heart still pounded frantically. Ronan turned his head to face him. Gansey’s expression was unreadable.

“Ronan, you’re shaking.”

It was true, Ronan realised. The trembling had overtaken his entire body, his muscles spasming as he was overcome. Overcome with what, he couldn’t have told you. Overcome with everything, he guessed. 

Gansey said, “Wait here.” He swung his legs over the edge of the bed to stand, and Ronan watched as he padded to the bathroom, listening to the faint pop of the lid of the plastic pot as he removed and put away his contact lenses. Moments later, Gansey re-emerged and crossed to where they had sat earlier, Before. He bent down to switch the light off, plunging the room into darkness. Ronan heard his light footsteps nearing as he returned to the bed, felt the mattress shift as Gansey climbed back in beside him, felt the coolness of the sheets against his legs as Gansey pulled them up and over him.

Once Gansey was laid in the bed beside him, Ronan felt the shaking begin to subside. Gansey rested a hand gently on Ronan’s arm, kissed his forehead, each cheek, then finally – gently – his lips. Ronan let out a long, slow breath, feeling the tremors leaving his body. When he felt Gansey’s fingertips brushing wetness across his cheeks, he realised he had been crying. Gansey shifted himself slightly closer, pressing his forehead against Ronan’s, and they lay there next to each other, Ronan listening as the sound of his heartbeat pounding in his ears slowed and faded. Eyes closed, he felt sleep pulling him under. Safe in Gansey’s arms, he let it take him.

\---

Hours later, Ronan stirred and gently woke, his eyes squinting into the pale dawn light creeping through the apartment windows. Gansey still lay beside him, still looked flushed, his hair still all over the place, looking thoroughly ravished. Ronan felt a pang in his chest, banished the sudden image of Parish lying there looking thoroughly fucked that came unbidden to his mind. There were still many things of which Ronan was not-thinking. 

He shifted his legs out from under the covers, replacing them neatly behind him so that Gansey wouldn’t get cold. He slid out of the bed, eyes gliding away from his friend before him. They scanned the sprawling cardboard Henrietta. In the far corner, a cup of cold tea sat next to a now unrecognisably squashed model building. 

Ronan bit his lip, pushed certain thoughts to the back of his mind. He turned his back on the bed, walked carefully over to the door to his room, avoiding the floorboards that creaked so as to not disturb the sleeping figure in the bed. Once inside, he closed the door softly behind him. He crossed the room and lay down on his own bed, the sheets cold and unwelcoming. He pulled them over himself anyway, rolling over to face the wall. His room, unlike the main room of the apartment, was still darkened, the black curtains he had hung at the window doing a good job of filtering out the morning light.

The green lamp, still switched on, cast its eerie green glow on the wall. In the corner, a clockwork spider span its golden web. Ronan, a million miles from sleep, closed his eyes. He thought of the spider, of the lamp. He did not think about the crushed cardboard model in the room outside. He did not think of the mug of water and leaves abandoned on the floor. He did not think of his best friend, naked and alone in the bed in the middle of the room.

He definitely, definitely did not think of Adam Parish.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...So while I was writing this I was thinking from the perspective of: Yes, Gansey wants Ronan because that closeness and connection they had in the last chapter matters immensely to him, and Ronan is home to him at this point. But also, Gansey recognises that this stuff is going on for Ronan, and that the sex isn't necessarily about him but that Ronan needs this somehow. Needs a safe space in which to realise what's going on with him, what his sexuality is.


End file.
